Page 31 of His Verdict
“Ruin it?” My laugh is a short, hysterical bark. “You think a good day is you systematically dismantling every last piece of my independence? I have nothing left, Jasper! No job you didn’t give me, no clothes you didn’t buy me, and now, no home you haven’t taken from me! Where am I supposed to go?”
The question is a cry of pure, desperate panic. Where is my refuge now? Where can I possibly go to escape him, even for an hour, when he has taken everything?
He lets out a heavy, exasperated sigh, the sound of a man whose patience has finally run out. He rounds the island in two long, predatory strides. I try to back away, but there is nowhere to go. He catches my arm, his grip firm but not painful, and pulls me back toward the stove, back into the kitchen.
“Stop it,” he says, his voice a low growl of command. He maneuvers me until my back is pressed against the counter, right next to the stove. He stands in front of me, his body a solid wall, effectively caging me in. His hands come to rest on the counter on either side of my hips. I’m trapped.
“You’re being dramatic,” he says, his voice softening slightly, returning to that infuriatingly reasonable tone. He’smanaging me again. “You are not homeless. You are standing in your home.”
He reaches behind me, picks up the fallen spoon, and rinses it in the sink. He then places it back in my hand. He stands behind me, his chest a warm, solid presence against my back. His hands come up to cover mine on the spoon.
“Now,” he says, his voice a low murmur, right next to my ear. “The risotto. You’ve let it sit for too long. You have to keep it moving.”
He guides my hand, forcing me to stir the pan. His body is a cage, his heat seeping into me. His scent—cedarwood and clean cotton—fills my senses. My mind is screaming, every cell in my body screaming for me to fight, to run, to push him away. But my body is frozen, paralyzed by the sheer, overwhelming force of his will.
“The secret is to add the stock one ladle at a time,” he explains, his voice calm and even, as if he’s a patient teacher and I’m a willing student. As if I’m not his prisoner. He reaches around me with his free hand, his arm brushing against my side, and dips a ladle into a pot of simmering stock I hadn’t even noticed. He pours it into the pan. “You let the rice absorb the liquid almost completely before you add the next. It’s a process. It requires patience.”
He is talking about rice.
But he isn't.
He keeps his hands over mine, guiding my stirring. He is so close I feel the rumble of his voice in my own chest when he speaks.
“You see?” he says softly. “It’s starting to come together. The starch is releasing from the rice. It’s becoming creamy. Cohesive.”
Against my will, my body begins to react. The rigid tension in my shoulders starts to loosen, a slow, unwilling surrender to his proximity, to the simple, repetitive motion. The initial terror is being replaced by a kind of numb, fatalistic acceptance. What else can I do? Where else can I go? He already gave me the answer. Nowhere.
He leans in closer, his lips brushing against my temple. “You’re a natural,” he whispers.
A traitorous warmth spreads through my belly. He’s praising me. And a sick, broken part of me preens under the attention.
I'm still upset. A deep, profound well of sadness and rage is still churning inside me. My life is no longer my own. I have no safe harbor, no place to retreat to where he cannot follow. The last of my illusions have been stripped away.
The longer he holds me, the more the lines blur. His heat becomes my heat. His movements become my movements. The distinction between the jailer and the prisoner is beginning to dissolve. And I don't know where he ends and I begin.
Chapter 14
I wake slowly, surfacing from a deep, dreamless sleep like a diver ascending from the crushing pressure of the abyss. My first sensation is not one of sight or sound, but of feeling. A profound, undeniable fullness. A heavy, comforting warmth deep inside me.
I am impaled.
My eyes flutter open. The morning light is a soft, gray wash against my bedroom blinds. The room is quiet. But the feeling is real. He is still inside me from the night before, his semi-hard cock nestled deep within my body. We must have both fallen asleep like this, tangled together after the last shuddering orgasm wrung us both out. He is a dead weight on top of me, his breathing a slow, even rhythm against my ear, one heavy arm draped possessively over my waist.
His body spoons mine, my back pressed against his chest, but it feels more like being pinned. I am trapped by his weight, by the intimate invasion of his body. A frantic, claustrophobic panic begins to bubble up from my stomach. I have to get away. I have to get out from under him, out of this bed. I need to be alone inside my own skin again, if only for a few minutes.
I try to move, an inch at a time, a slow, painstaking effort to slide my hips out from under him without waking him. If I can just create a little space, I can slip out, escape to the shower, and pretend this hasn't happened. I shift my weight, trying to ease him out of me.
It is a mistake.
The subtle movement, the clenching of my inner muscles as I try to dislodge him, has the opposite effect. I feel him stir against my back, a low groan rumbling in his chest. And then, I feel him begin to harden, the slow, thick expansion of his cock stretching my inner walls. He is waking up. And he is still inside me.
“No,” I whisper, the word a soundless plea to the universe.
His arm tightens around my waist, pulling me impossibly closer. His hips shift, a lazy, rolling motion. He begins to fuck me.
There is no preamble, no kiss, no foreplay. Just a slow, sleepy, possessive rhythm. He is still half-asleep, fucking me with the absentminded instinct of a man claiming what is his. It is the most intimate, most violating, most profoundly arousing thing I have ever experienced.
My mind screams in protest.This is not okay. You are not an object for him to use in his sleep.But my body, the goddamn traitor, is already responding. The lingering soreness from the night before melts into a slick, liquid heat. Every slow, deep thrust is a perfect, agonizing stroke against my most sensitive nerves. I am already wet, already arching back into him, my own hips beginning to match his lazy, hypnotic rhythm.